An Affair to Remember (Blu-ray)

(Fox Home Entertainment, 2.1.2011)

Several years after his retirement, Cary Grant told a reporter that the film his fans asked about most was not His Girl Friday, North by Northwest or any of his other dozen or so masterpieces. The film they most asked about was An Affair to Remember. For its mostly female fans, Leo McCarey’s 1957 weepie is a touchstone just as George Cukor’s Camille had been for an earlier generation and The Way We Were and Ghost were for later generations. A couple (Grant and Deborah Kerr) meet cute, fall in love, separate for a logical reason, get back together, separate again by accident and, finally, come together. It’s hokey, the humor is strained, the theme song is godawful and the musical numbers -- with Kerr and a bunch of obnoxious professional children -- are unbearable, but it still works.

Grant’s movie-star presence is the best thing An Affair to Remember has going for it. Just imagine Glen Ford or Van Johnson in the same role (yikes!). Grant makes the material feel far more credible than it has any right to. Also, Kerr is spunky and there’s a lovely performance by Kathleen Nesbitt (as Grant’s elderly grandmother, though she was only sixteen years older than the star).

McCarey is a professional craftsman, though his approach lacks the psychological depth and visual sophistication that Douglas Sirk or Vincente Minnelli might have brought to the material. In remaking his own Love Affair (1939), which starred Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne, McCarey tackles the demands of both Technicolor and CinemaScope. In high-def, the blues, reds and oranges are much richer than they were on the film’s two previous two DVD editions -- and the patterns on Grant’s suits are visible for the first time.

McCarey ignores widescreen opportunities for the most part, except for two scenes emphasizing the obstacles separating Grant and Kerr. There is, however, one remarkable shot in which Kerr opens a window in her apartment, revealing the reflection of the Empire State Building (where the couple is to have a rendezvous) in the corner of the frame. The extras include a commentary by film historian Joseph McBride and Marni Nixon (who does Kerr’s singing), a slick booklet and six features about the stars, director and making of the film. By the way, this review was written just a few yards from the still dangerous intersection where the film’s pivotal event takes place. -- Michael Adams